


On the low

by GamblingDementor



Category: In the Heights - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 08:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15166691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GamblingDementor/pseuds/GamblingDementor
Summary: Nina spends the day at the bodega and hears more than she bargained for. Pre-musical.





	On the low

**Author's Note:**

> I finished this up for the 4th of July! Happy In the Heights day! Fuck Trump!

"Are you sure you don't need another soda?" Usnavi asks, interrupting her for the fourteenth time. "Or a Kit Kat? You must be hungry, right?"

 

Nina is grateful that, hunched over her like an abuelita, Usnavi cannot see her roll her eyes.

 

"I'm fine," she says, trying to keep her patience that he has been testing all afternoon − without any harm meant, she's sure, but she only has the one intense mom and she's not looking for a second one. "I'm reading."

 

"Are you cold? Do you want me to turn off the AC?"

 

"I'm _fine_ ," she repeats. "I came here _because_ the AC broke at the dispatch."

 

Usnavi nods and leaves her be − for now. She's made herself at home at the back of the bodega, squeezed between the ageless conserve cans and the diapers. A thick textbook carefully balanced on her folded up knees, she's cramming through and trying to take notes as best as she can in the quiet of an early weekend afternoon. Outside the rush of pre-work caffeine addicts, the bodega is a lonely place, more and more people deserting it for the bigger stores. She nibbles on the eraser of her pen, trying to focus on her reading. This is only one of the many textbooks she is planning on getting through by the end of the summer. Hopefully she'll be done with this first one today, if Usnavi leaves her to it. Putting the pencil to paper, she waits for the words to reveal themselves.

 

"Do you like slushies?" She hadn't even heard his steps back to her little nook. With Sonny out god knows where and a thinning clientele, there's only the two of them in the bodega and Usnavi is finding every excuse to fret. "Sonny loves 'em, I think they're a bit gross but if you like 'em I can…"

 

" _Usnavi_ ," Nina snaps, almost getting cross. "Do you want me to go to the library?"

 

"What? Oh, no no no, you stay here, I'ma… I don't know…"

 

"I came here because the dispatcher was being loud and it was too hot, but if you can't be…"

 

"I can!" He cries out, waving his hands in apology. "I can be quiet. I'll be quiet. Sorry."

 

He gets back behind his counter and she shakes her head, smiling. She'll miss him in only a short couple months when she's gone, but until then, she's pleased to be in his presence when she could simply have gone home or to the library.

 

The door chimes open and Nina dives back deep in her book, happy for his getting distracted. She should have started to study in the bodega much sooner on slow days. Across the aisle, Usnavi's cat is staring at her between rows of condoms. _The tactical uproot set into motion by…_ A giggle comes. Nina frowns. She hears Usnavi try out a joke and apologize for it. More giggles. A remark that can only be qualified as flirty, for which he does not apologize. That voice…

 

"It couldn't…"

 

As quietly as she can, Nina stands up and, hiding behind the shelves, tiptoes to just next to the counter without being seen but to no avail. The door has already clang shut but through the windows, Nina recognizes the form like no other, if she hadn't already caught the familiar voice. Usnavi, poor oblivious Usnavi is leaning on his elbows against the counter, his head between his hands and though Nina cannot see his face from this side, she has an inkling of the expression she might find there. The inkling deepens the closest she gets to Usnavi completely unnoticed. He is elsewhere.

 

"So, Vanessa, huh?" She whispers teasingly into his ear and Usnavi startles so hard he would have fallen if she hadn't held onto him.

 

"What… what are you…" His face has turned the cutest bright pink and he looks like he wants to be a million miles away. "Weren't you readin' over there? What are you talkin' about?"

 

She glances outside, hoping for more evidence, but true to herself, Vanessa is not looking back. The proof is all on Usnavi's face though, the blush and the smile he can't seem to hide even after having been found out. Nina's book is forgotten on the side as she grabs onto his arm, pressing him for more.

 

"Do you _like_ her?" She grins. "You never told me! Oh my god, does she know? Do you have a secret fling? Is this a thing?"

 

He tries to disentangle his arm but Nina clamps onto him, her head against his shoulder. Usnavi sighs.

 

"It's not a thing," he says resolutely. "There's nothing, I don't know what you're talking about, she just bought coffee and I sell coffee and I gave her the cup and now she's gone and there's nothing at all."

 

"Oh, you're smiling!"

 

She pokes his cheek where the smile is making it crease and warm up. He nudges her but his heart isn't into it.

 

"Didn't you got reading to do instead of bothering nice folks?"

 

Somehow, the textbook isn't nearly as fascinating as it was just minutes ago. A whole new world of possibilities opens before her.

 

"You have a _crush._ Oh my god, and on my best friend! I heard you, you were _flirting_."

 

"I wasn't flirting! I don't flirt!"

 

That, Nina could call out as a lie right now. Usnavi is a horrible flirt, ineffective more than relentless, but there is an attempt. There are many attempts.

 

"You were making her giggle," she points out. "Do you know how hard that is?"

 

"We're friends!"

 

Nina drops his arm and basks in the way Usnavi shuffles around nervously. Of all the things… Nina cannot remember a moment when she saw them talk more than the few words to purchase a cup of coffee and she knows for sure that all this flirting never happened in front of her before. But then, with Vanessa's job at the salon and Nina's extra study sessions early on, they haven't met up at the bodega nearly as often as they used to. Still, a whole new thing couldn't possibly be born completely out of her radar.

 

"You're not _friends_ ," she says. "You know nothing about her. This isn't what this is."

 

The novelty of it all, Usnavi almost lets himself be humored by Nina. Almost. Getting busy with the coffee machine, he turns his back to her, pours her a cup, an attempt to shut her up.

 

"I can be her friend," he says as if the very notion of him not being particularly close to anyone on the block was a damnable heresy.

 

"You could," she nods, "but you're not. You don't even know her full name!"

 

"That's not how you know you're friends with someone," he retorts and she loves how animated he always gets when he's on the defensive. "You don't even know my full name!"

 

She pinches his arm and he _ow_ s in pain.

 

"That's a bold claim to make, Usnavi Luis Salvador José Maria De la Vega y Jimenez."

 

He snorts, rubs his arm where she pinched it and keeps his hand there. How self conscious he looks, and close to anxious fretting. He's always been one to fret easily and that has always been something that brought them close. Whatever there is, and she thinks she knows, Usnavi does not want to talk about it, not openly. She smiles.

 

"I'm gonna be reading my book, alright? I'll be right there."

 

He smiles back, tipping his hat as she grabs her textbook and sits right back in her little nook. The cat tracks her, then closes its eyes, purring. She cracks the book open on her lap, chews on her pencil. This whole time, right under her nose… She shakes her head. College is right ahead of her, she has a dozen textbooks to go through before it and whatever there is brewing here, if it's a real thing, it'll still be there next summer, and if it isn't, she doesn't have to worry about it. She puts her pencil to paper and the words flow right out.

 


End file.
